Higher education reform in Vietnam

These challenges have required education sector, especially higher education to make a comprehensive reform from education philosophy to content, methodology, curricula and management..

INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON VIETNAM EDUCATION

HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM IN VIETNAM

Prof Dr TRAN QUOC TOAN - General Secretary

Vietnam National Council on Education

Introduction

The world has entered the 21" century with prospects and opportunities for

a rapid and dynamic development but also filled with challenges In that high-

speed shuttle heading to the future, most of the countries are now seeking for their own development based on investment capital, resources or geographical,

political and economical comparative advantages However, a common

awareness shared by most of the countries (not to say all of them) is to rely on education, science and technology as the key driving force to quicken and sustain its development This explains why, many countries, not only developing ones but also economies in transition, the EU and developed nations such as the UK, Japan, US are now taking up the issues of "education reform" or "education

renovation" In this context, education has both opportunities to develop and

challenges to face, namely:

¢ The emergence of knowledge based economy

¢ The scientific and technological revolution continuing to accelerate,

especially in the area of information and communication technology (ICT)

¢ The massive wave of globalization, the restructuring of economy and labor both at national and global level

¢ The requirements of high quality — human resources, responsive to the development demands

¢ Contradiction between economic, science-technological growth and

limited pace to create education output

These challenges have required education sector, especially higher education to make a comprehensive reform from education philosophy to content, methodology, curricula and management

Vietnam is a country at its low stage of development, and of course not excluded from this trend The State and Party are fully aware of the importance of education, scientific and technological development A report from the Central Committee of Vietnam's Communists Party, IX Congress has highlighted: "the development of economy, industrialization, modernization is a central task The path for Vietnam's industrialization needs to be and can be shortened compared with other pioneer nations to link industrialization with modernization, to make use of every capacity available to reach excellence and modernity in science and technology, to gradually develop a knowledge based economy, to promote intellectual resources and spirit of Vietnamese people, special attention should be paid to education, science and technology, and consider this as a platform and driving force cause of industrialization and modernization"

These tasks have assigned education sector a huge responsibility which is to build

up human resources for industrialization and modernization, to train a contingent of highly skilled science and technology workforce, who are able to grasp and apply knowledge into practice, to innovate and transfer technology and to complete

successfully the cause of industrialization and modernization

This presentation will present opportunities and challenges of Vietnam's higher

education and outline objectives and areas to be reformed in the next decade

Part I

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

OF VIETNAM'S HIGHER EDUCATION

1 The education system's issues

Education in Vietnam in the last 10 years has overcome a severe decline in the 80s of the last country and has made a considerable development, contributing to the enhancement of people's intellectual level, human resource training as well as to the country's socio-economic achievements in the years of

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reform International communities have already acknowledged and highly

bas ' ‘ l

appreciated the positive improvement of the Vietnam's HDI figure’ '

However, education in general and higher education in particular still

reveal many weaknesses and are facing enormous global challenges and specific difficulties, namely:

* Contradiction between the increasing learning demands of the population (with an annual increase of one million) and limited capacity of education system, especially higher education

* Contradiction between training and use, the economy's absorbance of

human resource is still limited (unemployment, inadequate job availability)

¢ The hierarchy of human resource development: on one hand, to train

highly-qualified human resource in key, advanced, high-tech industries to meet

the integration requirement and regional, international competition and on the other hand, to meet the immediate demands of localities, less developed sectors

at their initial stage of industrialization

* Specialized training to meet human resource need at present and general training to adapt to the restructuring of economy, labor and job mobility

The increasing expansion of upper-secondary education has put a great pressure on Vietnam's higher education system The number of upper-

secondary students has doubled from school year 1996 - 1997 to 2002 - 2003 While annually, there are about 800,000 upper-secondary leavers, university enrolment is only limited to 250,000 The accumulation of those who fail

university entrance exams has made the competition rate in 2004 university

exam up to 850/100 study places

Vocational training system, especially higher vocational training developed cradequately Though in recent years, the government has made efforts to expand vocational training colleges for training of highly skilled workers, to develop new types of schools such as_ people-founded establishments, organize short-training courses, class in industries (in 2000, the number of students taking short-training course increased by 179%, long- training course increased 382.4% compared to 1995), the unbalance in this sector has not been solved

(1) Vietnam’s HDI 1990 was ranked 121 1999: 110, 2001: 109

The development of higher vocational training has not been appropriately

paid attention to, on one hand, this slowdowns the increase in number of highly skilled workers and on the other hand, it makes vocational training less

attractive to young people

The mono-discipline of university has made it difficult for these

institutions to open new programs to meet market demands However, this has been done but quality remains low and renovation is slow due to the

unavailability of facilities, equipment and teaching staff

Content and curriculum of higher education: the relationship between

general education, vocational education, diversity, continuity, selectivity has not been solved Curriculum is still focusing on knowledge conveyance and

remains very academic, not related to work skills, social competences and job creation ability Therefore, to create learning eagerness among most of the students is one of the great challenges for teachers

Teaching methodology is still mainly based on illustrative and dictative methods, with the use of chalk and blackboard, lack of ICT support and modern equipments, not responsive to the increasing amount of knowledge and

does not encourage active learning

Higher education quality has become a major social concern in recent years There are institutions, disciplines and training programs which provide high quality courses but the overall mass-quality has not yet met requirements (for international integration and the need for highly qualified human resource

of the country)

Content, training programs, organization and methodology of teaching,

competences of graduates, have showed that there is a variation between

Vietnam and other countries in the world in defining the term "quality" itself The society has mentioned much about quality but has been slow to implement quality assessment Market dimension hasn't been viewed rightfully and fully exploited to make a healthy competition among higher education institutions The improvement of higher education's quality is therefore very imperative

Insufficient investment on higher education, facilities and equipments also

has downward effects on teaching quality It's not fair just to criticize on the quality while not taking into account the fact that there is a gap in investment

capacity on higher education between Vietnam and other countries in the

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region and the world Classrooms with only chalk and blackboard still can

produce high quality students, innovation in methodology and educational

philosophy can prove to be very effective (like in mathematics, literature, philosophy), but not in the case of experimental sciences and technology where

necessary modern equipments are not available

Higher education management in general still shows some degree of

bureaucracy, with limited decentralization and division of functions and tasks Professional in higher education management is low, autonomy and social

accountability has not been effectively realized With the current perception and methodology of management, institutions, administrators and lecturers are not the main key players and engines for education reform We do not mention here any shortcomings or weaknesses but a slow in reform has resulted in many obstacles in meeting the demands

Obviously, there is also another gap, namely the balance and quality of

research at higher education institutions, the establishment of corporations in

universities or universities in corporations, shared social responsibility but some major issues, which must be on top priorities in the road map for higher

education reform in the next three years, are content, curriculum training methodology and management

2 Social impacts: social-economic reform

The knowledge based economy has insisted on higher education to acquire new capacity The Declaration of the World Conference on higher education in the 21"

century has stressed that "for a society which has become more knowledge

based, higher education and research today must act as crucial ingredients for a sustainable development of culture, society, economy and environment for all, communities and people”

The development of market economy with socialist orientation together

with the implementation of industrialization and modernization has created

opportunities for higher education in Vietnam The shift from a centralized mechanism which the State takes up most responsibility to a market model has called for higher education system to undertake fundamental reform in its approach to socio-economic circumstances and training process Higher

education must take into account the aspect of investment sources, cost and

investment effectiveness, the correlation between benefits and obligation of the

State, society, investors, institutions, learners, competitiveness, the realization

of social policies, the consideration of human resource training as a major input for social-economic development These above mentioned issues have not yet been dealt with or studied thoroughly and systematically

Education, especially higher education, has been assigned with new roles and functions, these are: | the top national priority, 2 human resource building,

enhancement of people's intellectual level, talent fostering, 3 key player in

quality assurance of the whole education system, 4 a source of new cultural, spiritual and material innovation, 5 human development for the future, 6

safeguarding and dissemination of popular values, preservation and development

of national cultural heritages, protection of national and community's interest, and solving contradictions arisen by the globalization process

However, the context of uneven development among economic sectors,

localities, regions - on one hand, the need to access to knowledge and on the other hand, the specific requirements of the industrialization and modernization

of Vietnam - has demanded higher education to seek for an appropriate way and model

3 External impact: Globalization

The third wave of globalization in the world has begun in the 80s with its major characteristics which are the inter-influence and inter-dependence among sectors on the global scale and brings about both negative and positive

effects Globalization of capital, investment, trade, service, science and

technology, the restructuring of international economy are the major setting

and driving force for globalization in education sector

Global major trends in the 21‘ century are: the scientific and technological revolution; knowledge based economy has created a new way of enrichment, helped to build a lifelong learning society The development of intellectual civilization must be based on human innovation and creates opportunities for education to develop

An in-depth analysis of higher education has shown that while education scale has increased the present wave of globalization has diminished the role of state in investment In this context, higher education tends to be no longer a

public service supplied solely by the state In addition to capacity enhancement

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and effectiveness of management, the state will only provide subsidy for

"customers" (users) Higher education will receive less (in proportions) from

the public finance Regarding state investment, it is predicted that a period of

difficulty will be seen in the reform process in each country

When higher education shifts to mass education for the purpose of "lifelong learning", education's feature also becomes more diversified: market oriented, learner centered, financial autonomy, "a corporation" management style, market content, and competitiveness among higher education establishments This

requires higher education system to supply to the society the best quality of its

product, otherwise it will be excluded from the whole process

One of the characteristics of globalization in higher education is that education product (highly skilled labor) is oriented to serve the global market

Therefore, competition in quality of human resource and education system

itself is becoming a severe challenge This happened in the past, but the present wave of globalization has demanded higher education to act like an "industry" and "importation and exportation" can be expanded (from the point of view of WTO) And in the era of information and communication technology, the

"industry" can operate without frontier One example is that the EU has

established a unified education system to enhance effectiveness, quality and

competitiveness Thus, apart from sharing experiences, the need to have a set

of standards in education, partnership and continuity in international education becomes more apparent

Globalization has also brought about the restructuring of international labor, cultural integration, and together with the globalization in education, this phenomena will have a great impact on other social factors like community, cultural diversity and conflict, identity evaporation, practical way of life and brain drain from less developed countries These are the issues that need to be

carefully considered and examined

If we consider the capacity and level of higher education systems, it is obvious that globalization will not bring about equality in this unequal competition Developing countries with limited capacity but long tradition, high determined political will and appropriate strategy have to seek for its own way,

a road map to integrate and a "strategic forecast" (as experiences of Japan, South

Korea, Taiwan .), otherwise they will incur "a loss on their own ground"

At the threshold of the 21" century, Vietnam's higher education system Is

not excluded from these challenges, it has to meet the requirement for high- quality human resources for each locality, sector, region, level of development

in each specific period and higher education system itself needs to integrate into higher education in the region and the world

Part II

OUTLINES FOR VIETNAM HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS

IN THE NEXT DECADE

1 Trends and objectives

Education closely relates to social, economic and political changes and

development The effects of those changes to the educational system, contents

and structure are in many different ways The specific characteristic of higher education is to train high level human resource for all fields of society Together with the development of the society, the demands for high level human resource are ever increased The trends of Vietnam higher education are gradual changes from elite education to mass education (education for majority)

In that trend, the overall objectives of higher education reforms in Vietnam are:

— Quality and effectiveness improvement (key issue)

— Meeting the demand for diversity and different levels of human resource, developing talent, gradually integrating regionally and internationally

— Increasing reasonably the scale and accomplishing the structure of training

— Sound implementation of social policies, ensuring equity in education The conception of quality and effectiveness should be defined by scientific and practical meanings:

— Firstly, the measurement is based on how human resource meets the

national development that requires human resource of diversity and multi- professional levels (from human resource for modern high-tech zones to remote underdeveloped areas) Thus education quality should be understood as being

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divided into different levels The good quality is not merely high intellectual but

also be appropriate and applicable effectively into different areas and sectors

— Secondly, gradual transferability and integration to the region and the world

— Thirdly, education quality is represented in reasonable solutions of knowledge provision, learner capacity and attitude training On one hand, the

learners need to have knowledge, professional skills to take part in labor

market after finishing school, on the other hand, they need to have aspiration,

ideal, responsibilities and compassion and truthfulness; self-learning capacity, self-approaches to new knowledge, creativeness, team working, self-reliance

and self adaptability to professional changes (it is the weakness of higher

education in Vietnam)

Implementation of social policy, insurance of social equality (especially to remote and disadvantaged areas and people ) is the essential task of higher education It is not merely a priority but a strategic solution to train the human resource, managers and ensuring the sustainable development and harmony among areas, ethnic groups, for the development of talent among the disadvantaged people

Higher education is the highest step in education system with the aim not only to meet the demands of human resource but also to train its own masters

in development process: masters of its own profession and of a nation This is

an essential aspect of higher education It would be a mistake if the focus is only on quantity and paying less attention to quality, more attention to train people to be buyers, wage earners lacking of national spirit and social responsibilities Institutions of such higher education are deeply dependent on market mechanism and commercialization

In the socialist oriented market mechanism, on one hand, higher education

looks towards labor market, considers efficiency and competitive capacity (locally and internationally), on the other hand, it fully awares of the goal that education must contribute to head the society towards ideal, moral and cultural values This is not an argument but reality experience our ancestors summarized through its development history of thousands of years "talents are the life-sustaining elements" This is really profound philosophy that Vietnam higher education should be impregnated and moved towards higher level in the new era

2 Renovation Contents

Higher education reforms firstly are the renovation in its philosophy and objectives On that basis, it determines renovation in content, methodologies

and curricula, attached to renovation on management mechanism - the cores

At the same time, attention must be paid to other areas such as renovation on: educational institutions network, education forms, human_resources, educational finance mechanism It is important that all elements of renovation should support each other The overall co-ordination of renovation

process is the most complicated task of educational management

¢ Education contents, methodologies and curricula

The basic orientations of education contents, methodologies and curricula are:

— Reasonable combination of basic contents and newly modern knowledge for integration into the regional and international areas

— Linkage to requirements for levels of human resource in each area and field

— Reasonable combination of creativeness and practical knowledge and skills

— Insurance of the diversity of education forms to meet the demands of continuing and lifelong learning

— Be standardized and accredited of quality

— Formation of social action programs to link education with reality and students’ quality cultivation

Requirements:

a) Creation of necessary conditions to maintain high qualification and quality of secondary education to ensure quality higher education

b) Diversification of education contents to change to optional education by providing options for the learners in terms of textbooks, curricula, syllabi,

disciplines, specialization levels in each field

c) Renovation of education and training methodologies Stress on the

"active" role of the learners, promote their creativeness in knowledge receiving and application; equip them with capability of self-learning, self-study, self- assessment and setting themselves up on business Improvement of traditional education methods and encouragement of modern teaching methods and